SILKWOOD V. KERR-MCGEE CORPORATION

Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee Corporation is a dense
court decision concerning statutory interpretation
and punitive damages. But it is better
known for the mystery at its heart: the unexplained
1974 death of Karen Silkwood, a
twenty-eight-year-old divorced mother of
three small children. In the quarter century
since her death, Silkwood has become a symbol
of the antinuclear movement in the United
States.

The complicated legal action was occasioned
by the radioactive contamination of Silkwood,
a laboratory analyst at Kerr-McGee's Cimarron
nuclear fuel-rod fabrication plant near Crescent,
Oklahoma. Silkwood, who had lived most
of her life in small Texas and Oklahoma towns,
had been working for Kerr-McGee for a little
more than two years before a routine radiation
check in early November 1974 revealed that she
had been contaminated by plutonium, one of
the most radioactive substances in existence.
Subsequent tests disclosed that the radioactive
poison persisted not only in Silkwood's person
but in her apartment.

Before these unsettling incidents, Silkwood
had complained about what she saw as Kerr-
McGee's cavalier disregard for worker safety.
Furthermore, as an elected union representative,
she had been responsible for bringing the
company's safety violations to the attention of
the Atomic Energy Commission. So, when she
discovered she had been exposed to extraordinarily
high levels of radiation, she suspected
that she might have been intentionally contaminated
for her whistle-blowing. She also
believed that the company had doctored photomicrographs
of fuel rods in order to meet
regulatory standards. On the night of November
13, 1974, she had made arrangements to
show a reporter for the New York Times evidence
of alleged Kerr-McGee illegalities. On
her way to the meeting, she was killed in an
automobile accident that has never been adequately
explained.

After her death, Bill Silkwood, Karen's father
and executor, sued Kerr-McGee in federal
court for civil damages accruing from Karen's
contamination. Because of the suspicious
circumstances surrounding the death of a
nuclear-industry critic, the Silkwood civil trial
became a cause célèbre for the antinuclear
movement. The Silkwood family was represented
in court by the flamboyant attorney
Gerry Spence from Wyoming. At the conclusion
of the longest civil litigation in Oklahoma
history, the jury found in favor of the Silkwood
estate to the tune of $505,000 in compensatory
damages and a staggering $10 million
in punitive damages.

A myriad of legal motions and appeals
stretched the case into the 1980s. The circuit
court of appeals eventually overturned the
punitive damages portion of the district court
verdict. But on further appeal on January 11,
1984, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a five to four
decision, reversed the circuit court and reinstated
the jury's finding of punitive damages.
Although Congress in the Price-Anderson Act
of 1957 and the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 had
certainly intended to institute a comprehensive
regulation of nuclear power, the Supreme
Court concluded that the legislators had not
meant to preempt the assignment of punitive
damages against a nuclear licensee in a civil
lawsuit. The holding remains controversial
among some legal scholars who question the
Supreme Court's reading of relevant nuclear
regulatory statutes. Perhaps more importantly,
the name Karen Silkwood continues to
resonate in the memories of nuclear critics,
abetted by books such as Who Killed Karen
Silkwood? (1981) and popular films such as The
China Syndrome (1979) and Silkwood (1983).